Young and Crafty: How to make a pallet trough with dividers {Power tools not needed}

Monday, September 3, 2012

How to make a pallet trough with dividers {Power tools not needed}

I feel like that title doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but you’ll understand exactly what I mean in a minute! After seeing Thrifty Décor Chick and Christina’s Adventures trough’s, I knew that I had to have one. I just wanted mine to be a little bit different. The main difference was that I wanted sections to set my turquoise ball jars in rather than one long trough.

I roughly used their plans. I sort of remembered how they both made theirs and then I just winged it. If I had $5 for every time I winged a project, I would be rich by now. Seriously. A lot of winging it goes on around here.

The first thing you need to do is grab three boards and cut them the same length. I used some wood from old pallets that I had torn apart. I used my miter saw but you could definitely use a miter box and a saw.

I then stood up my pieces of wood to measure the end pieces and the two middle pieces. Basically, you will need 4 pieces of wood that are the same length. You could use a measuring tape. But I just hold my wood up there, grab a pencil and draw a line. Wayyyy easier than trying to figure out if you’ve got a quarter of an inch or sixteenth!

Next, grab some wood glue and put a generous amount on all of the sides that will touch another piece of wood. We have these handy dandy clamp things that work super awesome.

Now add your middle pieces. I just used a clamp in the middle of both of them to make sure the glue stuck really good.

I grabbed some Ebony stain that we had and gave it a quick coat. It wasn’t perfect because I knew I would be painting it.

Right after I stained it, I painted it white. I didn’t wait for the stain to dry at all. This kid of helps it look a little more rough. I only put one coat of white. And yes, I did got back and paint the inside.

Take some sandpaper and rough it up to your hearts content. I wanted it to look really chippy and old. The Ebony color stain is perfect showing through!

The last thing I did was add furniture pads to the bottom so that it wouldn’t scuff up my dining room table.

And now my turquoise ball jars that I gathered from garage sales sit beautifully inside. The middle is reserved for pens and pencils since the kitchen table is my landing place for homework. (Art in the background can be found HERE)